It is known that for at least twenty years the geopolitics of the West has been characterized by a real obsession with what the strategists in Washington and London define, not wrongly, the “anaconda strategy” against their main geopolitical rivals . This strategy consists of creating military bases and deploying Western armies along the entire perimeter of the borders of Russia and China (where possible) in order to literally crush and suffocate the expansive aims of Moscow and Beijing. Exemplary expressions of this geostrategic conception are the control of Ukraine (which passed to the West after the 2014 coup d’état), the annexation of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries into NATO and the European Union as well as the militarization of the island of Taiwan, the strengthening of military ties with the Japanese state and the partnership with the Philippine state in the South China Sea. This geostrategic vision is associated with the control of the seas, the main trade routes and the straits (thalassocracy) through the military fleet to maintain constant pressure on the economic and military expansion of the main antagonists of the Anglo-Saxon empire. We have already observed how Moscow and Beijing have reacted to this “policy” (https://www.geopolitika.it/en/the-challenge-to-anglo-saxon-thalassocracy-and-the-chinese-hegemonic-attempt/) and how, on balance, this strategy cannot be successful in the long term (https://www.geopolitika.it/en/the-geopolitics-of-russia-analysis-and-geostrategic-aspects/) partly because it has been overcome from a purely military point of view, partly because the West no longer enjoys real military and geostrategic superiority over its geopolitical adversaries. But the surprising thing is that Russia and China were the protagonists of an asymmetric response to the strategy of the Anglo-Saxon territorial anaconda, contrasting it with a much more insidious and lethal one: “The strategy of the economic anaconda”. With this term we mean the slow but inexorable process of hoarding and control of the world’s economic resources aimed at depriving the West of the raw materials essential to its transformation industry (and therefore to its economic development). This process is aimed, precisely, at a real economic crushing of the West and at making it dependent, more or less completely, on Moscow and Beijing. This strategy includes both the Ukrainian question (https://www.geopolitika.it/en/ukraine-cui-prodest/) and the control of the economic resources of Niger and of African states in general. The East therefore responds to the purely military strategy of the West with a more specifically economic one, much more threatening and “substantial”. The recent overthrow of the pro-Western government of Niger says a lot about the threat that looms over the entire West. And on the latter’s plans to free itself from the sword of Damocles represented by being dependent on Russian and Chinese raw materials and those of countries in the orbit of Moscow and Beijing. If this continues, nothing but energy transition! It will be necessary to reconvert the entire European production system with costs that, frankly, would be unsustainable. After Russian gas and part of the Chinese rare earths, uranium from Niger is now also made unavailable (or almost) for the West (the Nigerian military junta which has just come to power has banned the export of uranium and gold to France) with potentially disastrous repercussions on the energy self-sufficiency of France and Europe as a whole. Where will the French now get the uranium needed to fuel their atomic power plants? With the control of the Nigerian mines, Russia has in its hands over 60% of the world’s uranium production (also considering the production of states in Moscow’s orbit such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) and slightly less as regards the market for the processed product use of nuclear power plants around the world. I don’t know if it’s clear. Anyone who wants to abandon fossil fuels to focus on atomic energy will have to knock on the doors of the Kremlin. The “economic anaconda strategy” of the East is slowly enveloping the West in its deadly coils.
THE “GAP” BETWEEN THE HEGEMONIC CLAIMS OF THE WEST AND ITS ACTUAL STRENGTH.
At the end of the Second World War the US economy alone produced almost 50% of the world’s GDP and the entire West (i.e. the USA AND the countries in Washington’s geopolitical orbit) over 70% of the same. The immense colonial empires of France and the United Kingdom guaranteed control of the economic and mineral resources of half the world. The West essentially had a near-monopoly on the world’s wealth and resources. Since then many things have changed and the weight of the countries of the former first world (the capitalist economy countries of the West) has been drastically reduced to the point of ceding primacy to the BRICS club or to the new economic giants that have appeared in reality world geopolitics and geoeconomics. These countries (in particular Russia and China) have undertaken an unprecedented economic expansion and an all-out struggle for control of the world’s mineral resources (on which the West and in particular Europe depend in a worrying way), giving rise to what we have defined as “the economic anaconda strategy” aimed at making the West dependent (and therefore geopolitically subordinate) to Moscow and Beijing. This strategy clashes with and overlaps with the geographical-territorial strategy of the West implemented in particular since the end of the last century. Which of the two will be more lethal? Hard to say. What is certain is that the West’s undertaking seems more difficult as it no longer seems to have a geostrategic superiority over its adversaries. Neither from a quantitative point of view nor from a more purely qualitative one. Something that the Ukrainian conflict is demonstrating in an exemplary way (and it could not have been otherwise given the geostrategic absurdity put in place). If the game is not yet over it is due to the obstinacy of the Western establishment in not recognizing a defeat which, in truth, was already certain before the hostilities broke out. But no one will save us from a geopolitical and geostrategic disaster that is starting to take shape even in the minds of Western elites. And while we continue to fight a war that can in no way be won (and which swallows up immense human and material resources) geopolitical rivals are taking over key resources for our economies (to regain possession of which we will be forced to undertake other burdensome commitments warlike?). We are in the middle of the deadly fight between the two anacondas. Which envelop each other relentlessly. Each tries to trap the other in its mortal coils. And then swallow up the remains.